Flames played in his eyes. He looked absurd, sitting there in his makeshift throne room, wearing a three-piece black suit. Thought he owned this place, did he?
I crossed my arms. “Love the makeover. The room has so much more space now. How much do we owe you?”
“Who are you?” Roman asked behind me.
“That’s Anubis, God of the Dead,” I told him.
“The name is Inepu,” Anapa said. It sounded midway between Anapa and Enahpah. “The Greeks didn’t bother to pronounce it properly. I always found them very close-minded. Don’t follow their suit, you’re better than that.”
“You aren’t a god,” Roman said. “Gods can’t walk the Earth. Don’t have enough juice.” He turned to me and Raphael. “Trust me, I’ve tried to summon one.”
“Why the hell would you summon a god?” Raphael asked.
“He was trying to kill his cousin,” Anapa said.
“That was a long time ago.” Roman waved his hand.
Anapa’s lips curved, and he smiled a bright genuine smile, suffused with humor. “No, that was last May.”
“Like I said, a long time ago,” Roman said.
Anapa laughed and pointed his finger at Roman. “I like you.”
“Are you a god?” Raphael asked.
Anapa waved his hand. “Yes and no. The answer is complicated.”
Right, we were too stupid to understand it. “I’m sure we can scrape enough brain cells together between the three of us. Indulge us.”
“There is no need for such hostility, Andrea Marie. I’m not your enemy. Well, not yet.”
So he knew my middle name. So what.
Anapa shrugged. “I suppose I will explain this to you, so you will stop wondering about it. We have important subjects to discuss and I’ll need your full attention. When magic began to fade from the world, I took a mortal form and fathered a child, pouring all my essence into it. Then I fell asleep. My child in turn had a child, and he had a child, and on and on, my lineage stretched throughout time, until the returning magic awoke me. As I became aware, I hovered on the verge of existence until my descendant decided to do as most men do and bred with a charming woman. I called to my essence within the bloodline and merged with the beginning life during the moment of conception. In a sense, I fathered myself into being. You could say I am an avatar. Neat trick, huh?” He winked at us.
The human part of him kept him alive during the tech. That also meant he was weak while the magic was gone. Weak was good. “I thought you’d look more Egyptian,” I told him.
“And how do you think the original Egyptians looked?” Anapa raised his eyebrows. “What do you know of us? Were you there at the birth of the glory that was Egypt? Were you there to watch as we mixed with Nubians, Hittites, Libyans, Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks, you dumb little puppy? Colors, pigments, texture of skin and hair, those things are mere glaze. The vessel underneath is always clay.”
This was above my pay grade. “Roman?”
“He might be a nut job,” Roman said. “If he’s telling the truth, he isn’t at full strength.”
Anapa sighed. “So tiresome. Very well.”
Wind swept through the office, streaming from behind Anapa—hot, heavy with moisture, streaked with decay, the odor of spiced wine, and heady aromas of resins. The flames bent away from Anapa. A jackal howled, a long eerie wail that gripped my throat in a ghostly fist and squeezed.
The man on the chair leaned forward. A translucent outline shimmered along his skin, expanded, and a different creature sat in Anapa’s place. He was tall, long-limbed, and lean. A network of muscle bound his torso, crisply defined, but far from bulky. His skin was a warm, rich brown with a touch of terra-cotta. His face with its wide brown eyes was beautiful, but it wasn’t the kind of beauty you wanted to touch—it radiated too much power, too much regal disdain. As he looked at us, the contours of his head flowed like molten wax. His nose and jaw protruded forward and narrowed to a dark nose. Two long ears thrust up. Black and gray fur sheathed his face. The flash of white fangs in his mouth was like lightning.
Magic streamed from him, potent, powerful, overwhelming.
He rose from the chair, an impossibility, a man with a human torso and a jackal head. Outside, the two Ammit roared in unison. The press of his magic was impossible to bear.
The illusion shattered. I realized I had forgotten to breathe and sucked in air in a hoarse gulp.
Anapa smiled at me, sitting in his chair again, languid and mildly amused. “Now, that we have that settled, let’s talk. I have a bone to pick with you. All three of you, as a matter of fact.”
Raphael took a step forward. “I will reimburse you for the beast.”
“The one you killed?” Anapa’s animated face turned puzzled. “Oh, there was no need. I resurrected her the moment the magic wave appeared. I did very much enjoy your battle. A stunning display of strategic thinking.” He looked at me and then at Raphael. “You and you, you work well together.” He turned to Raphael. “Except at the end when both of you went a little mad.”
A muscle jerked in Raphael’s face.
“Don’t worry.” Anapa wrinkled his nose. “Happens to the best of us.”
Raphael took a step forward. I put my hand on his forearm.
Anapa rubbed his hands together. “Now we’ll have ourselves a bit of show-and-tell, shall we?”
The floor of the office between him and us turned lighter. Stylized figures formed on its surface.
“Neat, isn’t it?” Anapa grinned. “I got an idea from an old movie. So, listen and watch. Please feel free to sit down if you wish.”
Brown figures came down from the hills toward the blue river.
“That would be the ancient Egyptian cattle herders. The climate changed, and all of their grass fields are drying out, so they have to go back to the Nile. Look at them, they are so sad.”
The figures fell to their knees and started drinking from the Nile. On the other side a second group of figures started throwing rocks at the newcomers.
“Those are the people who had remained in the valley. They don’t want the poor cattle herders there. See, they are all upset.”
One of the figures held up a crooked staff.
A huge triangular head broke the surface of the water. An enormous brown and yellow snake slithered out of the Nile and began to feed on the newcomers.
Anapa leaned forward. “That would Apep. The God of the River. These guys, the ones who stayed in the valley, they worshipped him, so he wouldn’t eat them. He is a nasty bugger.”
The dismembered bodies of the ancient Egyptians fell in the water.
“But what’s this?”
Four figures appeared, shaking swords and spears. One had a hawk head, the second had a cat’s head, the third a jackal’s, and the fourth seemed to be a bizarre cross between a donkey and aardvark.
“That would be Ra, his daughter Bast, me, and Set.”
“I know that myth,” Roman said. “It was Ra who killed him.”
Anapa looked at him in mild outrage. “I’m sorry, were you there? No. Then hush. Of course, myths say that Ra killed him. That’s what you get when you’re a sun god and crops depend on you, my friend. Look, I’ll prove it to you.” An ancient mural appeared on the wall, showing a yellow spotted cat resembling a mountain cat stabbing a snake with a curved blade. “Supposedly this is Ra slaying Apep. Small problem: Ra has a hawk’s head on his shoulders. He doesn’t turn into a cat, except for this one time. Keep that in mind. Now where were we?”
The four figures attacked the serpent, chopping at him with strange curved swords and poking him with spears. The serpent flailed, knocking them aside, and biting at their bodies. Finally the picture-Anubis turned into a huge jackal and bit Apep’s neck, clamping it down. The three other figures rushed him. The snake convulsed, knocking aside everyone except for Bast. The nimble cat jumped over the flailing body and stabbed the serpent in the heart.
“So why do the myths say that Ra killed him?” Roman said.
“Because priests were men and we can’t have the big enemy getting killed by a girl, can we now?” Anapa winked at me. “Holy texts are written by committee, and Ra had more priests. His cult was stronger. He is the sun, the life-giver, while Bast was only the protector of Lower Egypt. She used to be a lioness. Very fierce. By the time the priests were done with her, she’d turned into a domestic kitty cat. Took them a thousand years or so, but they crippled the lion.”
A bright flash of light exploded from Apep’s body, knocking the four figures down.
“Look at us, all knocked out.” Anapa smiled. “Lots of magic is released when you kill a god. Look at me there. See, I only have one fang? It broke off in the snake’s neck. Took me two days to grow a new one.”
The light faded. The four gods still lay prone on the ground. Little figures swarmed Apep, chopping his body to pieces.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Saii. His priests. They’re trying to save parts of him. That one took a scale. And this one got a vertebrae.”
“Those four are eating the corpse.” Raphael pointed at the four figures on all fours biting Apep’s side.
“They are devouring his flesh, so it will live through them. Nasty business.”
The final person pried Anubis’s fang from Apep’s dead body and the figures ran away.
“Of course, we chased them, but they were crafty,” Anapa said. “They scattered to the four winds, hoping to eventually reunite and resurrect their god.” Anapa clapped his hands. The mural faded. “And that brings us to our current calamity, gentlemen and the lady, of course.”
The god smiled and pointed at Raphael. “You cost me my fang. It was dipped in metal and made to look like a knife, but inside it’s still my tooth with the blood of Apep in it. It was in the vault of that damned ruin and you had to buy it out from under me.” He turned to Roman. “You lost the staff carved from the vertebrae of Apep and his rib. They hid it in a room full of magical artifacts, so their magic would mask its location from me. You found it, took it out, and instead of taking it someplace safe, you practically served it back to them on a silver platter. Your own holy relic. Here is your award for stupidity. Congratulations.”
